


It's All In the Timing

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot Spencer's Cooking, Gen, Hacking, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Wedding Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9487412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: When Sterling goes missing, Maggie realizes the person responsible is most likely to be at a local event.  Fortunately for her plans to rescue him, the full Leverage team is already planning on being in attendance at the same event.Nate and Sophie's wedding.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ginipig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginipig/gifts).



> Your prompts always inspire me to my best heights - I hope you enjoy your gift, and I hope you enjoyed playing with us this year!
> 
> Thanks for joining us again, and we'll see you next time!

“Absolutely not!” Eliot had already turned to leave before Maggie had even finished speaking, but Parker and Quinn immediately stepped into his path, forcing him to turn back and face the music, as it were. “Look, I’m sorry that your boyfriend’s gone missing, but I’ve got two hundred guests showing up in less than twenty-four hours, and if I leave Peggy alone in the kitchen for too long, she’s going to start working on that god awful bruschetta recipe!”

Feeling the weight of everyone’s stares on him, the hitter bristled. “Do you know how far out of season tomatoes are right now? It’s going to taste like crap!”

Maggie waited until the small crowd had settled back down before continuing, “I’m hoping once Hardison gets into James’ files we’re going to find an obvious target, and this is going to be resolved smoothly and quietly.” One of them snorted at that – Maggie suspected Parker, but wasn’t actually watching the thief at the right moment.

“And you expect us to pull this off without alerting Nate or Sophie?” Quinn asked. “Granted I’m not as familiar with either of them as the rest of you, but that strikes me as one seriously tall order.”

As the rest of them nodded, smirked, or otherwise expressed their opinion at how profoundly Quinn was understating the truth, Maggie said, “Sophie’s guest list includes most of the major players in the European art world, legal and otherwise. I’m hoping that whoever James ran afoul of is in town _for_ the wedding.”

“Plus, she doesn’t want to get into another relationship argument with Nate,” Hardison observed. Maggie thought for half a second about just punching the hacker, but had to acknowledge that he wasn’t _entirely_ wrong.

“No, she doesn’t,” she finally said out loud. “I also don’t want to ruin Sophie’s day by dragging Nate’s issues with Sterling out for everyone to see.”

“All right,” Tara interjected, stepping into the lead. “Hardison’s got to stick with Maggie, give us something to go on. I’m maid of honor, not to mention the most qualified, so I’ll keep Sophie distracted. Eliot and Quinn…”

“I’m going back to the kitchen,” Eliot announced. “You want to keep a low profile on this operation, call me when there’s something useful I can do.”

Quinn pointed at his fellow hitter. “I’m the only one right now who stands a chance of making sure he and Peggy don’t murder each other.”

That just left Parker. Maggie and Tara looked at the thief at the same time. “I’ll go to the kitchen,” Parker said, before either of them could offer her any options. Maggie realized that neither Quinn nor Eliot looked happy about the idea, but she felt a sort of malicious glee at the idea of Eliot being stuck with watching over Parker. _Serves you right,_ she thought. 

“All right,” she said to everyone, “Hardison will set comm frequencies to lock out Nate and Sophie. As soon as we know something, we’ll pass it on.”  
*******************************************  
“You know we’ve got no chance of keeping Nate from finding out, right?” Hardison asked, as he dutifully followed Maggie back to the suite of rooms she’d been given to use.

Maggie looked supremely unconcerned at the idea of her ex-husband interfering in what she was trying to do. “You let me worry about that, if and when it happens.”

“Worry about what?”

Maggie pulled up short with a gasp, and Hardison for a moment was convinced he was having a heart attack. Nate had stepped out of the side corridor just in front of them, looking impossibly pleased with his – admittedly impressive – sense of timing.

“What are we worried about Nate finding out?” their former mastermind repeated.

“That he’s an intrusive, controlling ass sometimes?” Maggie asked. Glancing over her shoulder, she told Hardison, “Go on and get started. This won’t take long.”

Giving Nate a helpless shrug, Hardison skirted around them and continued on to Maggie’s rooms. His almost insatiable curiosity was bugging him to find out exactly how somebody as honest and forthright as Maggie planned on keeping her operation a secret from Nate, now that he knew something was going on. His deeply rooted survival instinct, on the other hand, had him reprogramming the ear buds with one hand, while firing up James Sterling, Interpol’s laptop with the other.

Security on the computer fell squarely into the “would give anyone who wasn’t me some difficulty” category, and Hardison had to admit to a grudging respect. Once he was in, he set one of his best programs sifting through the encrypted files and feeding what it found into an algorithm he had to prioritize a mark’s access to their files. It was a solid first step to figuring out what had occupied most of Sterling’s attention over the past couple of weeks.

 _Of course, it doesn’t take into consideration somebody from his past wanting a piece of the old boy,_ he was forced to admit – at least to himself – but they would burn that bridge when they came to it. Settling into his seat, he listened idly to Peggy and Eliot snipe at each other, and Quinn’s almost comical attempts to keep the peace between them. Parker, as far as he could tell, was keeping herself distracted by tasting everything she could get her hands on.

“Peggy and Quinn – am I the only one who thinks that’s weird?” Maggie asked as she entered the sitting room. Hardison had a moment of soul-blinding panic before he remembered that she hadn’t taken one of the spare comms yet.

“Nope,” he told her, as he reached for one of the small devices and tossed it to her. “But it’s working, so we just let them be.” He thought for a second about telling Maggie the story of the time Parker had realized exactly what Quinn and Peggy were up to in a back storage closet of the pub, but decided to let it go for the sake of his own personal safety. _If anything were to catch everybody’s attention…_

Maggie joined him at the desk. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

“Not long at all,” Hardison told her, checking his programs and finding that three names had already been spun to the top of the list. “Your boy’s a serious multi-tasker, but even money’s on any of these three being our target.”

 _Any? Hardison, can’t you narrow things down a bit? This is going to be tricky enough to pull off without chasing our tails all over creation._

Hardison tried not to take the heavy note of annoyance in Eliot’s voice personally because a) it was Eliot, and b) given how he and Peggy had been going at each other, Hardison was likely just a convenient target for the hitter’s mounting frustrations. “Mind your damn canapes,” he snapped back. “I’ll have something more specific by the time we’re ready to move.”  
****************************  
“Tara, what’s wrong? You’re so tense you’re practically vibrating over there.”

The masseuse who was working on Sophie raised her eyebrows at Tara when she turned away from the window looking out on the courtyard. “I can take care of you next, Ms. Cole. No additional charge.”

Tara smiled at the woman and politely waved the offer aside. “Pretty sure ‘consistently tense’ is a default state for the maid of honor.” She shifted her attention to Sophie. “I stress so you don’t have to.”

It was a misstep, albeit a small one. “Is there something to stress about?” Sophie asked, a small, but pronounced crease appearing in between her brows.

Relaxing her expression into a smile, Tara shook her head. “Just the usual; lots of moving parts to juggle and maneuver.” Returning to the massage table, she grabbed a chair and sat so that she and Sophie were closer to being on eye level. “You know what goes into productions like this. Are you seriously surprised that there’s a lot going on?”

Sophie studied her for a long moment, but Tara kept her thoughts and her expression pure until the dark-haired grifter finally relaxed. Putting her head down on the table again with a sigh, she signaled for the masseuse to resume working.

Her distraction covered Tara’s wince as Eliot finally ordered Parker out of the kitchen. “You know, we might want to consider coming up with another job for Parker,” she said, settling back into her seat. “Personally, I don’t relish the idea of a bored thief with twenty-four hours to kill.”

“I figured she’d be happiest hanging around the kitchen,” Sophie said, her voice slightly muffled. “She could visit with Peggy, and she likes to watch Eliot work.”

Thinking about the chaos that was still reigning several floors below their current position, Tara was forced to laugh. “You’re adorable.”  
**********************************  
There was so much he hated about the plan, Eliot didn’t have the time or the energy to lay it all out. _Not that Maggie’s in the mood to hear it,_ he thought, checking the hors d’oeuvres and giving his sous chef last minute instructions. Peggy had already been dragged off by Tara and Maggie to help with the adventure of getting Parker into a bridesmaid’s dress.

Nate had even stopped by earlier, but since he’d been alerted to the mastermind’s suspicions already, Eliot was able to deflect his questions with little difficulty.

“This would be so much easier if you could help.” Quinn came into the kitchen, fussing with one of his cufflinks. “As it is, I don’t see the point in my getting all dressed up.”

“Nate’s already asking questions,” Eliot said, grabbing the other hitters arm and fixing the offending piece of jewelry. “He sees you in fighting gear, he’s going to know something’s up.” Letting Quinn go, he looked him over. “If you’re worried about losing your deposit..?”

The other hitter drew himself up – clearly offended. “This is _not_ a rental.”

Eliot rolled his eyes, but softened it with a grin. “Hardison – what do we have on the target?”

The hacker was putting the finishing touches on the music, while simultaneously cloning their target’s phone and working with Parker on getting any data off the man himself that might tighten their knowledge of Sterling’s location. _All before we join Nate at the altar,_ Eliot noted. He was getting tired just thinking about how far they had to go before this was over.

 _”I got enough off his cell phone to cement him as our guy,_ Hardison said. _”Parker lifted his wallet. Dude keeps a townhouse about three miles from here. You want my opinion, that’s where Maggie’s missing sweetheart’s being held.”_

 _”Somebody explain to me why we’re not just calling the police?”_ Tara asked.

Before Eliot could say anything, Maggie interjected, _”Because I want the best. Not to mention I’d like to leave him at least a little bit of dignity.”_

Eliot looked at Quinn, and was reassured to see that other hitter was thinking along the same lines he was. Maggie’s sentiments were very noble, but if she thought they weren’t going to give Sterling massive amounts of grief for their having to rescue him, then she really didn’t understand who she’d rallied at all.  
******************************  
Against all odds, the ceremony and the rescue went off without a hitch. With their closest friends and family to witness, Nate and Sophie stood before God and Father Paul, and swore to love and cherish each other for the rest of their days.

Eliot slipped out just after the recessional to join Quinn and make sure the extraction went smoothly. Twenty minutes later, Maggie received a text. _Package secured._ There was a photo attached; James looking exhausted and somewhat battered, but otherwise whole. Maggie blew out a quiet breath on seeing him safe – an impossible weight finally easing from her chest.

“He okay?”

Startled, Maggie looked up to see Nate standing opposite her. “Who?” she asked, fumbling her phone back into her pocket.

 _Seriously?_ his expression said without any words at all. Out loud, he did say, “You know, all you had to do was ask. I would have helped. So would Sophie.”

 _That_ surprised a laugh out of Maggie. “You hate James! You both do!”

“I don’t…” Nate began, but then he admitted, “Well, not nearly as much as Eliot does, and you roped him in.” Moving forward, he took Maggie in his arms and kissed her on the forehead. “All I care about is, does he treat you well?” When Maggie nodded, he asked, “Does he make you happy?”

When she nodded again, he hugged her tightly. “That’s all I ever want for you, Maggie. Never forget that. And anything that needs to be done to make that happen, I will always be willing to do.”


End file.
